Friday, May 19, 2017

At sea

We were now pushing on to Hilo,
Hawaii. Back into the good old U.S. of A. Five days at sea, April 28-May
2.Would I get bored?I think not.Most days I played cards at 9 a.m. with my friend, Alice, from
Australia.

Alice and me ... no money involved.

One day I had a massage, a
long one.I do like to indulge myself on
the ship.I’d go to the gym or walk the
deck, read.That’s the usual stuff.And deciding on the next cruise, the Greek
Isles, for next year.Mike, Vangie, Stef
and I got our deposits done … we’ll be ready to go.If anyone is interested in where and when,
I’ll give you the information.Message
me.

Then there were the other things.I was doing hula and ukulele lessons.Those were 30 minutes each, with hula every
day and ukulele every other day because there were so many people wanting to
learn.

In between that, there were three
Hawaiian craft days.In
addition, there was an orchid-lei-making class and a ribbon-lei-making
class.I hardly had time to eat lunch.And I had no time at all to go to the
destination presentations to learn what was coming up in the ports we’d be
visiting.

Orchid lei-making class. It was fun and didn't take too long.

Evenings were spent going to the
Elite Lounge to join our friends, including some new ones, Derek and Margie
from Toronto, being silly and laughing and having fun.Then we’d all go to dinner, occasionally in
one of the excellent specialty restaurants, sometimes a movie or a show, or
maybe just going back to the cabin to work on a blog or sleep.

Me, Vangie, Mike, Margie and Stef. What a crew. We were eating at the Crown Grill, one of the specialty restaurants, and quite excellent. It was so good we ate there twice this trip.

Not much left ... delicious food, right, Mike?

I slept a lot … good sleep as the Beautiful Emerald
Princess was usually rocking just right.The waves are one of the most soothing sounds in the world, I
think.I’ll miss them when the cruise is
over and we’re back on land.Six weeks
on a ship is wonderful.I don’t think
there’s any reason to be bored.

﻿I had noticed in the recent days when
walking the deck that the water has changed color, from turquoise to the bluest
sapphire I’ve ever seen.It’s
beautiful.Up until the seas changed and
got a bit ugly.On those days it was
difficult to walk out on the deck, but it’s all part of the adventure.

We crossed the equator, and
received another certificate.We’re
gathering wallpaper by the day, and all we have to do is be on the ship.But it’s all new stuff, and welcome.

There’ve only been one or two
other ships out here.Where are they
all?Ours is a lonely life in our little
community.

An impromptu hula demonstration with the Hawaiian ambassadors who were playing music in the piazza.

We were scheduled to arrive in
Hilo Wednesday morning, May 3, but there was excitement on Tuesday.There was a medical issue on board and
Tuesday morning we were steaming as quickly as we could, at about 22 knots or
so, to get to Hilo to get the person off the ship and to medical help. It became critical, and a helicopter
evacuation had to be performed.While I
didn’t see it, some of my friends did.The
helicopter sent down a medical person to evaluate the situation, then a basket
came down, the person was loaded and the airlift completed.A C-130 circled around the entire time … watching
… waiting to help if there was a problem with the airlift.We did hear later all went well and a full
recovery was expected.

After the rescue was complete we
cut our speed to 10.8 knots.We were
getting too close to Hilo and we weren’t expected to arrive until 7 a.m. the
next morning.We ended up slowing and
just doing big circles out in the ocean until it was time for us to get to the
dock.

Steam from the lava reaching the ocean.

The upside was that we
spent the afternoon and night on the ocean, watching the steam come off the
water where lava was flowing into it.We
also saw the orange glow of the lava as it came down the hillside.We wouldn’t have seen that otherwise.